Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.

My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game.

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is-a politician.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.